How to format your references using the Microgravity Science and Technology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Microgravity Science and Technology. For a complete guide how to prepare your manuscript refer to the journal's instructions to authors.

Using reference management software

Typically you don't format your citations and bibliography by hand. The easiest way is to use a reference manager:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteFind the style here: output styles overview
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX syles are usually part of a LaTeX template. Check the instructions to authors if the publisher offers a LaTeX template for this journal.

Journal articles

Those examples are references to articles in scholarly journals and how they are supposed to appear in your bibliography.

Not all journals organize their published articles in volumes and issues, so these fields are optional. Some electronic journals do not provide a page range, but instead list an article identifier. In a case like this it's safe to use the article identifier instead of the page range.

A journal article with 1 author
Westall, F.: Geochemistry. Life on an anaerobic planet. Science. 323, 471–472 (2009)
A journal article with 2 authors
Rolff, J., Siva-Jothy, M.T.: Invertebrate ecological immunology. Science. 301, 472–475 (2003)
A journal article with 3 authors
Wang, Z., Szolnoki, A., Perc, M.: Interdependent network reciprocity in evolutionary games. Sci. Rep. 3, 1183 (2013)
A journal article with 4 or more authors
Smith, O., Clapham, A., Rose, P., Liu, Y., Wang, J., Allaby, R.G.: A complete ancient RNA genome: identification, reconstruction and evolutionary history of archaeological Barley Stripe Mosaic Virus. Sci. Rep. 4, 4003 (2014)

Books and book chapters

Here are examples of references for authored and edited books as well as book chapters.

An authored book
Brown, M., Cutler, T.J.: Haematology Nursing. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., West Sussex, UK (2012)
An edited book
Rhim, J.S., Kremer, R. eds: Human Cell Transformation: Role of Stem Cells and the Microenvironment. Springer, New York, NY (2012)
A chapter in an edited book
Koschmider, A., Kriglstein, S., Ullrich, M.: Investigations on User Preferences of the Alignment of Process Activities, Objects and Roles. In: Meersman, R., Panetto, H., Dillon, T., Eder, J., Bellahsene, Z., Ritter, N., Leenheer, P.D., and Dou, D. (eds.) On the Move to Meaningful Internet Systems: OTM 2013 Conferences: Confederated International Conferences: CoopIS, DOA-Trusted Cloud, and ODBASE 2013, Graz, Austria, September 9-13, 2013. Proceedings. pp. 57–74. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg (2013)

Web sites

Sometimes references to web sites should appear directly in the text rather than in the bibliography. Refer to the Instructions to authors for Microgravity Science and Technology.

Blog post
Andrew, E.: Giant Methane Storms On Uranus, https://www.iflscience.com/space/giant-methane-storms-uranus/

Reports

This example shows the general structure used for government reports, technical reports, and scientific reports. If you can't locate the report number then it might be better to cite the report as a book. For reports it is usually not individual people that are credited as authors, but a governmental department or agency like "U. S. Food and Drug Administration" or "National Cancer Institute".

Government report
Government Accountability Office: Aviation Security: TSA Should Take Additional Action to Obtain Stakeholder Input when Modifying the Prohibited Items List. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC (2015)

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation
Anderson, S.L.: Ninth grade transition: Best practices for a successful transition to high school, (2008)

News paper articles

Unlike scholarly journals, news papers do not usually have a volume and issue number. Instead, the full date and page number is required for a correct reference.

New York Times article
Stellin, S.: Your Digital Trail Follows You to the Border, (2014)

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by name and year in parentheses:

This sentence cites one reference (Westall 2009).
This sentence cites two references (Rolff and Siva-Jothy 2003; Westall 2009).

Here are examples of in-text citations with multiple authors:

  • Two authors: (Rolff and Siva-Jothy 2003)
  • Three or more authors: (Smith et al. 2014)

About the journal

Full journal titleMicrogravity Science and Technology
AbbreviationMicrogravity Sci. Technol.
ISSN (print)0938-0108
ISSN (online)1875-0494
ScopeGeneral Engineering
Applied Mathematics
Modelling and Simulation
General Physics and Astronomy

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